In large institutional settings such as hospitals, the dispensing and delivery of drugs has become a time consuming process. In particular, sterile items, controlled medications, biological samples, and the like need to be prepared and transported in a secure environment while ensuring the safety of patients and hospital workers.
Transporting objects via pneumatic tubes is known to the art. Pneumatic delivery systems are used extensively for the rapid and efficient transportation of a wide variety of articles. These delivery systems are used in a number of business operations, including, but not limited to, banks, hospitals, office buildings, industrial plants, and transportation terminals.
To send a payload in a carrier, an object is placed within a carrier which is then transported within enclosed pneumatic tubing by air under either positive or negative pressure to a desired destination. The interior of the closed tube and the outer dimension of the carrier form a seal so that the carrier can be propelled between the destinations by a vacuum or positive air pressure.
One specific area of commerce which currently uses the pneumatic tube for transporting materials is the hospital or biomedical research/manufacturing industry. Pneumatic tube delivery systems have proven to be particularly useful for transporting blood samples, medicines, intravenous bags, viral samples or other biological or chemical matter within hospitals or laboratories. Some of the payloads transported may be highly addictive drugs (i.e. morphine) which need to be tightly controlled.
In a hospital environment, pneumatic tube systems are also used to transport prescriptions from a pharmacy located in the hospital facility to the patient. Such pneumatic tube systems comprise a sending station located at the pharmacy in communication with a plurality of receiving stations located throughout the hospital. Each receiving station typically includes a single receiving bin such that all carriers are delivered to the single receiving bin, regardless for which patient and room the prescription within the carrier was destined. In use, when the doctor prescribes medication, the pharmacy fills the prescription and delivers it inside a carrier to a desired receiving station via the pneumatic tube system. The user at the receiving station opens the carrier and determines to which patient at which room the user needs to deliver the prescription. User error may occur during the identification of the room and patient resulting in miss-delivery of the prescription. In addition, unauthorized users may have access to the carriers at the receiving station.
Thus, there is clearly a need for a system and method providing a secure pneumatic tube carrier delivery. Also a need exists for a system and method providing routing and tracking of carriers in a pneumatic tube system to a receiving bin at a receiving station associated with an end user to ensure the secure delivery of carrier contents to proper destinations and authorized end users. Furthermore, there is a need for an auditable trail indicating the chain of custody of carrier contents from the sending station to the end user.
According to the present principles there is provided a pneumatic tube carrier system for routing and tracking carriers in a pneumatic tube system comprising a pneumatic tube system, a connecting diverter with blower, and storage piping with diverters, sending and receiving stations, a system control module, and identifying tag readers configured to read identifying tags. The identifying tag readers scan delivery information to provide secure and authorized delivery of carriers and their contents. The identifying tag readers and system control together provide an efficient and secure method and system of routing and tracking carriers and carrier contents throughout the pneumatic tube system.